Medicine: A Child's Story

In the Community Center at Biloxi, Miss, last week, civic officials and colleagues from nearby Gulfport solemnly bestowed honorary citizenship and the keys to their cities on a smiling, bright-eyed little boy named Keith Drake. For good measure, they also made him an honorary police officer. When the speechifying was over. Keith responded with little more than a widened smile and a semi-audible "Thank you." Then he trotted to the next room for a slice of cake and a bottle of soda.

To the assembled dignitaries and members of Gulf Coast Lodge No. 1957 of B'nai B'rith, Keith's response could not have been more eloquent. The mere fact that seven-year-old Keith Drake could walk—let alone run—with scarcely a limp was both a gratifying reward for lodge members' efforts and a tribute to modern medicine. Two years ago, Keith was a cripple, seemingly doomed to live out his days as a cripple.

Rollers from Skates. Keith, the third son of LeRoy S. and Wilma Drake, was born in Evansville, Ind., where his father was a radio announcer. At 2½ he had difficulty getting up when he sat or lay on the floor, and he ran a high fever. In 13 days at Indianapolis' James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children, Keith's illness was diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis (often called Still's Disease when it strikes in childhood). Doctors prescribed the latest and most potent drugs, including ACTH and the cortisone group. The fever persisted, and gradually Keith's painful, inflamed and tender joints grew stiffer. The Drakes lost faith in physicians, took Keith to chiropractors. His legs became so crooked that he could not walk. Drake moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, hoping that a change of climate would help. But Keith could get around only on a footstool to which his father had attached the rollers taken from a pair of skates. And nothing helped until the wife of a B'nai B'rith officer put the Drakes in touch with Dr. Emil Gutman. onetime medical director of the lodge's Leon N. Levi Memorial Hospital at Hot Springs, Ark.

Dr. Gutman phoned his successor at Hot Springs, Dr. Edgar K. Clardy. Four days later. Keith ("twisted up like a pretzel'') was admitted to the nonsectarian, unsegregated hospital, where the lodge maintains 100 beds for arthritis cases. After years of inadequate treatment, Keith's case was tough. The inflammatory phase of the arthritis had subsided, but the crippling and deformity resulting from it were extreme. Dr. Clardy called in Chief Therapist Norman F. Ehrich. who squatted next to the five-year-old Keith's bed for a serious talk.